Cats & Dogs in the Afterlife

Hi everyone,

I just finished this one up today. It took me a while, because I needed to find a picture of my old dog, Lucy, whom I mentioned. Like I said, she died a long time ago, about 8 years ago, and we've digitized our old photo album pictures since then. So it took me a while to dig it up. I managed to put up a picture of her below.

I think this was taken back in 1999. She was in Denver at this time, as she went to live with my grandparents. I remember being really happy to see her when I would go visit them. I just loved petting her, and being happy to see her, and the fact that she was just so furry. Lucy was an Australian shepard, amd I get the feeling, looking back now, that she was probably a farm dog at heart. Like Fuzz, we adopted Lucy (I think she was from a shelter, but I do not remember how we got her). My parents say she was a nervous dog. Being couped up in an urban house with a small backyard probably made her stir-crazy. I have a feeling if we had lived on a wide-open pasture, she would have been right at home. Anyway, she was a damn good pet to have.

The week Lucy died was not a good week for me personally. There was other bad stuff going on in my life, and that came on top of it all. Unfortunately, we hadn't gotten to see her regularly in the last few years of her life. Back when we first adopted Fuzz, I wondered whether it was disrespectful to Lucy. Then I wondered what it would be like if Lucy and Fuzz had been around at the same time, whether they would get along. It seemed mismatched to own a dog, and then own a cat.

This brings me to one of the central points of this post, and this artwork. Dogs and cats, as creatures, are usually pitted against each other. People see dogs and cats as polar opposites, hence the above movie poster. "Dog people" are supposed to dislike cats, "cat people" are supposed to dislike dogs. This makes me really sad. I like to say that I like both dogs and cats, having owned one of each. It's fun to have all that outward energy and enthusiasm of a dog, like Lucy. The way she used to go after people was sometimes nervewracking for us, but she was a lot of fun for us, too.

Fuzz, on the other hand, was decidedly not a nervous, well, for lack of a better term, personality. Fuzz was not even afraid of dogs. One day, a woman who was walking a rather large dog, asked us if "that little grey cat that was following them" was ours. That was a a surprise reversal of events. Many people think of cats as being aloof, antisocial with people. Fuzz was not that way. Yes, she was solitary, as many cats are, but she would happily introduce herself to people. However, I think Lucy and Fuzz would enjoy each other's company, although they say a dog and a cat take some time to get used to each other.

That's why I got the idea to draw this. It was meant to be a representation of Lucy and Fuzz in the Animal Afterlife together. I drew it as if it were in Colorado or Utah or Wyoming, at the foot of the Rockies. I had no real specific reason for this, I just got the impulse, and I am fascinated by the topography found in these places. This was another landscape involving mountains. Mountainscapes are tricky to capture, but I really enjoy doing them, and seeing the whole thing come together.

I also did this as a late-afternoon, early-evening piece. I love playing with this quality of light. Again, it is a challenge, but I love seeing it come together. In this illustration, you can see that I had difficulty with the light on the grass. I wasn't certain of how the shadows of the grass blades were going to reflect. So I colored in the grass itself, then the light, then the shadow. It came out as an interesting blend of green, orange, and dark.

The source of light here is also particularly important. Notice the shaft of sunlight coming over the mountain. This was intended as religious symbolism. Usually, shafts of sunlight, especially coming down through the clouds, are used in images evocative of God. I have noticed this so much that I have taken to calling such shafts of light "God Beams." Below is just one sample of such an illustration.

See if you can think of any similar images you have seen. I like to use such images from time to time in my own works. I did in my illustration of the Divine Feminine figure clutching an M16 rifle. I do it to keep in touch with that deep, unitary dimension of the Unknown that connects all of us. It finds many expressions in religions, but the religions of the world have their own human flaws and moorings that hinder this expression. In my drawing and storytelling, I like to connect it back with that Spirit. I am still uncommitted on whether to call it God, in the Abrahamic sense, but this does It some justice.

My point was to show Lucy and Fuzz united together in the Great Unknown. I had wondered if they would one day be together, and now they are, and I did this as a celebration, in a way, of that fact. Not of her being dead, but her being in a Peaceful Place now. For Fuzz, I am glad, not that she left, but that she left the way that she did. Even though it was a painful surprise, with how it happened, we did enjoy all of our time together with her. We enjoyed her company up until the very last day. There wasn't a pall of dread hanging over our relationship for the last few weeks or months before she died. If nothing else, I am thankful for that.

Over these past few days, I have mellowed slightly in the emotions I have gone through. I still have flashes of sadness, but it seems to have dissipated quicker than I thought. In a way, I am concerned that I am not more troubled by Fuzz's death. Odd, but sometimes, I feel like the lack of a really potent emotion indicates apathy, even though I do not feel it. Then when the sadness does come, it is always too powerful and overwhelming, and I try to get away from it.

I hope this drawing can be a celebration of Fuzz's life, as well as my love for the pets, past and present, in my care. Even though my level of sadness has gone up and down, I still feel, on the whole, like I want to keep my life as quiet as I can, to honor Fuzz's memory. I don't know exactly why, but that's how I have felt since I learned of her passing. I do feel, however, that I am on the way to doing what I set out to, to moving my life forward, but never letting Fuzz just fade out or be forgotten. I intended this as a testament to the memory of Lucy and Fuzz, both of whom gave and received much joy in their worlds.

See ya, and keep wondering, folks!

Martin Luther King, and the Courage of Imagination

People of the World,

I think this opening is especially appropriate, given our task today. Anyway, today marks the 83rd anniversary the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Above is the "I Have a Dream" speech, a landmark in U.S. history. We've taken this day, this monday in January, off, for every year since 1986. To many people, this first holiday after the holiday season is just a "day off," or another day at work. In the past few years, though, I have attempted to keep a few things in my heart and my mind as I go through my daily activities today.

From a young age, I was bothered by problems in the world. When I was about 15, I began feeling this pit of despair about the human condition. I worried that maybe those dark forecasters of the future, and of human nature were right after all. What if all people only cared about themselves, in the primal sense? Maybe we were all just in it for our own power, survival, and primal drives. My fear was, Did that mean people who cared about others were just deluding themselves? This was what the fear seemed to be saying to me. This was the worst possibility of all. After having read 1984 at that age, I was determined not to let this happen, not to give in to my own primal urges.

Ever since then, I've been looking for people to model my life, and my mission, after. This mission is in part a political one, and in part a psychological and sociological one, a mission of the self. The people that have remained as icons for me are people like Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, in the most grand sense. To me, it is their great senses of both compassion, and justice, the longing for freedom, and for unity. Allow me to clarify.

Both were opposed to war and institutionalized violence, whether it be of the police, or the public at large. This is something I came to identify early on in life as critical for a complete moral code. They also refused to allow oppression of any sort, by whichever party may be perpetrating it. That spoke to me in a big way. Even though I considered myself kind, and caring of people, I could not tolerate wrongs. I did not want to "learn to live with" oppression, slavery, war, despotism by government, or despotism by corporation.

Right after Osama Bin Laden was killed last May, many people were seen to write, as their Facebook statuses, a quote from Rev. Dr. King that read thusly: "Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoit of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that." In class, a few days later, some girl remarked, in my argumentation lecture, why she dissed that comment, "I don't think somebody who wanted rights for black people would say that about a terrorist like Bin Laden."

That comment just really got on my nerves. Here's why it pissed me off. It was not just the ignorance of King, the not knowing (some people just don't know that much about history), but the refusing to know better, the refusal to just listen. In that moment, she was just saying "I don't know what that's about, so I'm just gonna piss all over it." What really made me bonkers about it, personally, was that Martin Luther King was about so much more than just "rights for black people."

King really knew how and when to speak truth to power. People were telling him and other civil rights crusaders that, as his colleague, Rev. Joseph Lowery put it, "It is not the appropiate time." I have observed that people say that often in politics. One thing I would ask them is a simple question in the Zen tradition: "If not now, when?" If you watch the speech above, one part of it is about " The Fierce Urgency of Now." "Now is the time!" That is even more true today than it was back when those words were delivered.

Anyway, in actual fact, Martin Luther King went much further in his social action than just civil rights for the black community. Listen to the speech he gave named "Beyond Vietnam," at Riverside Church in New York on April 4, 1967.






In this speech, he talked about the other side of the Vietnam Conflict, the one that Americans rarely talk about. Namely, that the U.S. had collaborated with France to keep their claim on Vietnam. The only problem with this game-playing, as well as similar games played in Iran, Guatemala, and other places, was that the good of the country's people was not regarded. They did not get the chance to fight, struggle and work it out in their countries. The leaders of the two superpowers dictated their destinies, and the people were forced to comply. We only talked about "freedom and liberty" for them in vague, glowy terms, but first, we kept our own gains on the line. Tellingly, he finished with a JFK quote, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."

Martin Luther king was also aware of the economic nature of this struggle for not just civil rights, but freedom, dignity, humanity, the humanity of black, white and all other races. In the I Have a Dream speech, he decried specifically a country in which "a negro in Alabama cannot vote and a negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote." Look at where this country is now. This sense that people can do nothing about our future now haunts us like the pall of impending catastrophe in some horror movie.

One poll I looked at (I forget which one) said that 5% of the public currently believes that Congress is doing a good job. That speaks for itself. As I mentioned before, the poverty rate has been increasing rapidly in the last six years. While I was researching that, I saw stats that showed there were many more children in homelessness. I have also begun hearing that hunger is becoming a big problem for people in this country. Not just in the third world, but in the United States, there are people who are going hungry (See here and here). When Dr. King was assassinated, he was rallying at a garbage workers' strike in Memphis.

Today in America, race relations still amount to a series of volatile fault lines. The most hairy of these is the white-black divide. All you have to do is say the wrong word, or make an ill-thought-out comment, and presto, you've ignited a centuries-old clash. They feel that guttural sting of racism, that weight on their dignity. Then when you get the heat, you feel wrongly blamed for some racist sin you didn't commit. This can make for an awkward and tense coexistence. Poor bastard, you were just trying to make some clever comment, now you've hit below the belt.

What formed this old clash comes from the simple history of slavery. This gets to the key of the meaning of MLK Day. Dr. Cornel West wrote on the history of the utterly dehumanizing slave trade. He observed that the Africans had been abducted, taken for weeks in ships that festered with brutality and diseases, in which many slaves died and were thrown into the Atlantic Ocean. Once in the Americas, they were stripped of any social worth, and essentially, any humanity they had, in the brutality with which they were treated. Now, they were not the only ones to have this happen, but it has happened. Even today, if you're black, you're more likely to be unemployed, poor, looked at with suspicion, and beaten up by the police.

This robbing of humanity needs to be addressed. But how do we address it? I don't pretend to have any answers. However, I do know that we need to use our creativity. This is what I mean by the courage of imagination. We need to be forthright enough with ourselves to imagine a different world, to question that which we are told is gospel, and doubt not just when people say what is possible, but when people tell you what is impossible. Imagination means that you proclaim your freedom, and then honor the dignity of others.



Van Jones, a former Green Jobs advisor to the Obama Administration, lays out what this means beautifully here. It is an injustice that he was expelled from said administration, simply because he had explored extreme-left politics 20 years ago. Meanwhile, senior members at Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, et. al., continue to work as Obama's advisors. What Jones did here that I want to see more of is talk about freedom. In this country, we are given a very narrow definition of what freedom is. Usually, it is just a code word to promote nationalistic saber-rattling and the allowing of corporate dominance. Sadly, freedom and liberty have become meaningless feel-good phrases used by the power-brokers.

Martin Luther King knew what freedom meant. Freedom does require a struggle, but not just a physical battle. It may mean a struggle with your peers, your family, your spouse. Sometimes it means being marginalized, cut out socially. Freedom and peace are seen as static states to many, but I believe they are much more active. As King said, so beautifully, "Peace is not the absence of conflict, it is the presence of justice." Thankfully, because of this overwhelming sense of desperation in this country, there is more willingness for people to live honestly, live truthfully, to refuse to be part of old patterns. Now, this type of change can be perilous, being largely an unknown, but we have seen the shortfalls of conventional doctrines, ways of living, and our lives are shifting. Let us see where this takes us.

See ya, and keep wondering, folks!

Get Low: Movie Synopsis & Response

Hi there everybody,

I've decided to branch out again today. I will be taking a look at a movie, in this case, what I liked about it. I wanted to bring up this film because it "grabbed" me early on, and it is about coming to grips with a life ending. The movie I would like to talk about today is Get Low. This sounds like the name of a Lil' John song, but it is a reference to being buried, to getting low in the ground. It came out a year and a half ago, in mid-2010. It stars Robert Duvall as Felix, a misunderstood recluse, Bill Murray as Frank, a funeral director from out of town, Lucas Black as his associate, Buddy, and Sissy Spacek as Mattie, a former girlfriend of Felix.

This film comes from an incident that happened in rural Tennessee, back in 1938. The movie is set in an unnamed town in the backwoods of Tennessee, around the same time (though a specific year is never mentioned). In the opening scene, a gang of kids is wandering around on Felix's property, and flee in terror when a shotgun sounds. This is Felix Bush's life. He lives exclusively on his backwoods property, rarely visiting the local town. Everyone tells stories about him, since no one knows what his story really is. He knows that he doesn't have much time left on Earth, and there is something he needs to share before his time is up

So he entertains the idea of holding a pre-death funeral for himself, as in Tuesdays With Morrie. This, however, is decidedly a less cheery affair. This is where Frank Quinn comes in. Frank is a local funeral director who has moved into town from Chicago. He isn't behind this idea at first, but Felix pushes him to help him plan it. The point of this is to hear the stories everyone in town is telling about him, and get his own story out while he can. Pretty soon, people from all over begin agreeing to attend the "living funeral."

Soon, Felix beings getting cold feet, when Mattie emerges. He insists that Frank contact a nearby minister and ask him to attend. However, the minister refuses, unless Felix "tells the truth." This is where we realize there is some deep dark secret, something so awful the minister refuses to face Felix again. Now, I will have to give away some of the surprise of Felix's secret, here. I don't want to, because I'd rather you see it, but I will tell you here, in a way that won't give the whole thing away.

At the end, people end up turning out, en masse, for Felix's "funeral party." The minister had been coaxed into attending, after all, by Frank. Mattie also turned out to see the spectacle. Now the time had come for Felix's big revelation. He took the stage, and told the reason that he had been on his property for decades. He revealed that he had an affair with Mattie's sister. He had planned to run away with her, but one night, 40 years earlier (around 1900), he got in an altercation with her and her husband, a fire got started in her house, and he escaped the burning house, while the woman and her husband burned to death.

Felix had felt to blame all that time. He had exiled himself because he was afraid to face that. What strikes me is that this is actually a very common story. People hide from their flaws or past wrongs all the time. We hide in all sorts of ways. We cut ourselves off from people, we are not truthful, we present false images to others. Felix had this thing weighing on his conscience, and he had had no way of addressing the wrong. He was going to die, so now he had to do it. This was the challenge of this movie. People like to see struggles in movies, and this one was a profound spiritual struggle.

Now, onto some of the parts of the movie that I liked. As I said at the top, it "grabbed" me from the beginning. What got me about it was the people in it. I believed in the characters I saw. There was something about this place and these people that seemed unforced, like it came easily. Now, Robert Duvall has a presence in his roles. It seems to me that it takes about 20 to 25 years for an actor on screen to obtain this presence. His chemistry with Bill Murray and the others made the tension really work. You knew there was this crazy hermit element to him, but he also showed enough of his

A technical aspect of the production that worked was the dialect everybody in this film used. That might seem bizarre, but having learned the distinctions between the dialects of various sub-regions, it caught my attention here. They didn't ham the typical "Southern" accents. The characters used just as much of the Tennessee dialect (since dialect varies in different areas of the South. I will explain these distinctions in a later post) as someone living there would.

Robert Duvall and Bill Murray in Get Low. Note the surrounding details of the period setting.

Aside from how they communicated, the period aspect was done just enough. The volume of old items and materials used was, to me, just the right amount. What I mean by this is that some movies really put forward the exact dates, which sometimes helps, but it also pins the story down as applying more to that time and place. They took the right amount of care to include rooms, recording equipment, cars, etc., from that late 30's-early 40's era, but they included few, if any, references to the time, the way many other movies do. In this way, the movie became a more universal test of coming to terms with a life ending.


The pacing of the story was both good and bad. At the beginning, the interactions between Duvall and the others grabbed my attention, and I never got disengaged from it. Toward the middle of it, the details, and the purposes for the scenes got more obscure. For a while in the middle of the movie, I was worried that I was going to get disengaged.


However, I wanted the movie to work by that point. You know that disengaged feeling, where your mind drifts to "What am I gonna do later?" That's what I am referring to here. Since I believe in the characters and the setting, I was willing to cut it some slack. By the end, it ended up paying off.


Then there was the meaning, that I referred to earlier. Fundamentally, this is a story about fixing a big problem, righting a wrong. Not just a wrong, the wrong. This was the big one, the one that speaks to what people avoid. We live our whole lives trying to avoid facing our shames, our wrongs, our defeats. When Felix decided to hold this funeral for himself, hear the stories people were telling about him, then say what his "big secret" was, that was an act of raw courage.


Having faced this, Felix's life was at peace. A life at peace is a good that people, from people with their whole lives in front of them to those on their deathbeds, seek, but is closer than they think. The reason my Grandmother's passing wasn't as sad for me was because I knew she had had a full and complete life. She had had about as good a life as anyone could ask for. With regards to Fuzz, the jury is still out on whether she could have had "more" in her life. I do know, however, that she lived with no regrets, no shame, no lasting pain that made her hide from the world. Looking back now, that was what made this story stand out.

Well, thanks for reading this "review." I don't know whether this should be called a review, or a synopsis, or what have you. I'll probably figure out a good name for it soon. This is the first of my posts on movies and plays I have encountered that I want to share, and frame, and discuss with you. I look forward to doing more of that.

See ya, and keep wondering, Folks!

Pet Memorials, and "Long or Short Posts?"

Hi there my peoples,

Well, today has been a little easier, so far, to deal with, than yesterday was. I guess now that Fuzz has discovered her new home in in Cat Heaven, I am a little more at ease down on Earth. Most of yesterday, I'd see some shadow in the corner of my eye around the house, and I'd think it was her, then I'd be hit anew with the shock of her being gone. Just the thought of her dying, leaving us, and being away, in the most drastic and ultimate sense, really tore at my heart.

Today, the same waves of grief that I described yesterday are still crashing (going from feeling okay about it to being totally devastated). However, today, they are less intense. I know they will never totally go from my life; I'm okay with that. Now I am grappling with the goal I set out yesterday night. I want to deal with the grief, but make sure her memory and spirit are always honored as part of my life.

One thing the great article on losing your pet that I read yesterday mentioned was to construct a memorial to the deceased critter. This is what I am working on now. Yesterday, another shocker was seeing all her food dishes and litter box out in the garage. All of Fuzz's accessories from the kitchen, but no Fuzz. They had all been layed out so methodically just one day earlier.

I decided we should give away, or donate most of the stuff. However, I will keep her milk saucer as a reminder of the wonderful effect she had on my life. Keeping that spirit and those memories present and real is my prime goal. I do not want time to diminish the importance of Fuzz.

This (Fuzz's milk saucer) will be part of our little Fuzz memorial

Anyway, on to another functional question about the blog itself. First, I read a couple of the posts to some of my family, who are my first readers. They said that the average internet reader is looking to read a short blurb, since they aren't willing to focus for very long. I understand this, although the subjects that I offer up for these posts and the way I naturally write often demands that go longer, sometimes much longer and more in depth, than I expect.

I like to introduce my subject, then talk about the issues, then lay out my view, backing up my view when necessary, and reconcile mine with those of others. Now, sometimes I include more sources and graphics, if I am talking about a big issue. Other times I like to talk about it in the context of some interaction I just had with someone. So my favorite thing to do is to tie in the big-picture issues with the little interactions I have in life.

This gives more reality to said issue, beyond it being a theoretical argument. I seldom used to find chances to connect the "micro-world" with the "macro-world," as I like to put it. This blog offers me a chance to do that. I would like to know what you think of it. Would you read this more if I wrote shorter blurbs on my drawings and others' works of art that I encounter, or can you read my longer entries without glazing over? I will wind up using both, but I would like to know what you think. Please comment on it.

Speaking of comments, I heard that some of my relatives had trouble putting a comment up. People being able to write in and respond to these entries is a key point of this blog. My dream is that someday, someone will find this blog, read an entry, and be sufficiently motivated to comment. It is that back-and-forth, the conversationality of it, that I would really love to get going. So please tell me, are you having any trouble logging in? I know Blogger is not the most up-to-date way of publishing, but it's worked for me in the past, and I already had an account with them.

Also, what do you think I should use as an opening line? All I could really think of was "Hi there," which I will likely do until I find something else that grabs me. I'd like to hear ideas from you guys though. Like I said, this is about a give and take between you and me.

See ya, and keep wondering folks!

In Memory of Fuzz: You Will Never Be Forgotten, You Will Always Be Loved

Hi there,


Well, our family got some bad news this morning. Our cat, Fuzz, had been having health problems. She had been drooling, less energetic, she ate and drank much less, and her breath really stank. She was not able to clean herself. We knew we had to take her to the vet, but we assumed that it was just a mouth infection that was bothering her. We thought that we would take her to the vet, they would get her rotted teeth worked on, and then she would get some of her spunk back.


Even yesterday, the doctor sounded semi-optimistic about her condition. He did offer the possibility that there might be a tumor in her throat, but that seemed unlikely at the time. He gave her an antibiotic (along with a fluid injection, since she was dehydrated), and when she came home, we observed that she seemed more alert, and with a little more energy. I watched her, looking at her food dish last night, expecting that she'd likely have a teeth extraction, and then we'd have her back here, somewhat healthy again.


This morning, around 8:30, the vet called. He told me that they were going to stick some apparatus in Fuzz's mouth to get the infectious stuff out. She had a tumor so swollen that they couldn't even get the machine in her throat. When I asked him he told me definitely that there was nothing they could do about the tumor at this point. This was really jarring to hear.


After all this time, Fuzz's time was essentially over. The best thing to do at this point, they told me, since she was already under anasthaesia, was to let her go to sleep. After talking with my Mom, we decided that this was for the best. Otherwise, they said, the tumor would get so bad Fuzz would choke to death slowly. At least this way, she could go peacefully and without pain.


This morning, Fuzz, a female with silver fur, passed away. We don't know exactly how old she was, but I estimated that she must have been about eight or nine years old. This is because the vet doing the tests a while back told us she was about five years old, and that was four years ago. So In her young years, she had been a stray cat. She had been abandoned in an old apartment. Our neighbor, a home repair contractor, took her in, and she lived next door until we took her in, about a year after that.


In the vet's waiting room yesterday, I said to my Dad, and to her, that I remember the first time I met Fuzz. Back then, I didn't know what her name was. We never figured out if she had had a name, or what it was, so we settled on the name "Fuzz," as in "the fuzz," or the police. Anyway, I was sitting out on the front steps one friday night in September of 2005. It was dusk, and I was waiting for Dad to arrive home from some trip. Anyway, I had some new warm-ups on, and then this little cat came up to me. She just started meowing at me, I talked to her, just hoping she wouldn't go to the bathroom on my clothes.


At that time, we were having mouse problems. Mice were getting into our food, crapping all in the kitchen, and making a mess. Fuzz kept hanging out in our front yard. Time went on, and in the early winter of 2006, around February, we began floating the idea of adopting this little cat, to take care of the mouse issue, even though I insisted on being gentle with the mice. We talked with the neighbors, and they said they would like us to take care of her. So, in March of 2006, thereabouts, she began staying at our house. A few months later, after they moved, she became "officially" ours. Fuzz caught a couple of mice, and the rest "got the message."


I have always had a soft spot in my heart for animals, but more than anything, for dogs and cats. Pets can provide you a dimension of companionship that people cannot. An animal won't give you an endless amount of drama, they won't judge you, they won't maliciously use you or manipulate you, and when you come home from an exhausting day, they will listen to you unconditionally, letting you blow your frustration away. It is well-known that a dog will display an eager, happy and enthusiatic attitude (I used to own a sheppard dog named Lucy when I was little). I used to joke that cats always look like they're annoyed or pissed at you.


However, if you spend enough time studying a cat, as I did with Fuzz, you can recognize signs of affection. For instance, if you find a cat head-butting you softly, that is their way of scent-marking you, of making you "theirs." In Fuzz's case, she was a very outgoing cat. When someone would come to the house, Fuzz would first rub her body up against them, then when they sat down, Fuzz would jump on their lap. She had this thing she would do with us, especially me, where she would jump on my lap , then kneed her paws slowly into me. Sometimes she would step on my crotch, which would really hurt.


It might seem odd that a guy in his teens and twenties would be so attached to a cat, but Fuzz was not just any cat. Over the six years that I knew her, I developed a special bond with Fuzz. In fact, some researchers have found great social benefits to having a pet. At the time we adopted her, I was fifteen. As a teenager, I was very awkward, and with my peers in high school, I was very tongue-tied, and often I would make a fool out of myself. I didn't trust myself around people my own age, since I believed that if they knew who I really was, they would think I was weird and be repulsed.

But when I came home, Fuzz would jump on my lap, and I'd just sit or lay on the couch for a while. I didn't have to edit myself, or be conscious of my word around Fuzz. I'd just lightly tell her what I felt. Fuzz was with me all through my victories in school, and running, and in my heartbreaks, trials, and periods of darkness. When I had my days where I was scared, scared to travel, scared of getting sick, scared to be with other people, scared to be alone, Fuzz was always there, listening.

All of my work had to be approved by Fuzz. Her favorite method of approval was sitting on the work.

We laughed and joked about Fuzz's antics, such as her charging at an open paper bag. She loved running along the top of the fence next to our house. A few nights, I would walk out front, and hear her meowing, not knowing where she was. Then I'd look on the roof, and she'd be calling at me. In her younger years, she was great at hunting. Any rodent, small bird, or insect was fair game for her. Many times, we would hear some ugly meow, and find Fuzz out front fighting some other neighborhood cat.

Of course, Fuzz had her own ways. The phrase "herding cats" is no exaggeration. We used to joke that we didn't own Fuzz, she owned us. It was, in fact, her house she was letting us live in. The running gag I used to do with her was talking to her, then responding in her words, with a tough-chick voice. It was our little ventriloquist act. For example, I would say "What can I do for you, Fuzz?" Then I'd answer, as her voice "Give me the food I deserve, damn it!" I loved messing with her that way, because I loved her.

Even though we liked to joke about what a prima donna she was, she was really social and outgoing to people. She was a popular fixture in this household. She would come up to you as you were working on some paper or book, sit right down on it, and then just look up at you. Even as I became more in my element with other people, I introduced them to Fuzz when they came to my home.

Today, I have cried a few times thinking about Fuzz. I think about the quizzical look on her face. It is a look of wonder, of unfettered curiosity. It struck me, now more than ever, that a cat is not bound by any of the restrictions people have. People seem to me to be doing their thing, in their habit practices, ignoring everything outside of that. Fuzz never did that.

I realized today that this has been my first deeply personal experience with grieving. This isn't my first ever loss. Two years ago, my Grandmother passed away at the age of 86, and my aforementioned dog Lucy had to be put down when I was 14. However, neither of those really hit me quite the way this one has. Today, I seem to have returned to my six-year-old self; everything seeming too big for me, making me sad inside. However, I learned that I am not alone. Research reports also show that people who own pets, children and adults alike, view the death of a pet as the death of a friend.

So, I've been experimenting with the way to grieve and honor Fuzz's memory. Over the years, I have used many modes of facing humiliation and heartbreak. I decided that I wouldmake today as quiet a day as possible, since few people would begrudge my taking a slow day to grieve a dear pet's passing. I decided to make no apologies for this, swearing off, for a moment, the feeling that I should be doing more. Then I thought, that's the way Fuzz lived all her life. She wasn't feeling like she should do more, and kicking herself for not doing it. She always did just enough for her.

I am going on so long with this entry because all the memories are coming back. All of today, I have been thinking of things I have seen Fuzz do over the years. People, it seems, have widely varied ways of grieving and honoring the passed. I, for one, get very sad, but I do not want to totally "get over it," because that would mean they would be lost, forgotten. I do not want this.

As I said, I have tried many ways of dealing with feelings of letdown or loss. When I was little, I used to cry a lot. Then, in my teen years, I used to keep soldiering on. Now, I know that there is an aspect of most things that happen that is neither bad nor good. To me, days aren't particularly bad or good, there are bad and good parts to them. As I took a walk this morning, I kept thinking of this song:

I thought of Fuzz, knocking on heaven's door now. This made me really tear up. I imagine that Fuzz is going off to some wonderful metaphysical cat afterlife, where she can chase laserpointers, hunt, nap, and claw people's laps to her heart's content. I hope she's gone on to a sort of "cat heaven." This is what I thought of, with tears in my eyes this morning, shortly after the call came from the vet. I imagined her going on up, arriving, and knocking on heaven's door, then being shown in to her new home.

The rest of today, with my family, we were not only talking about the sudden nature of this sad news. We were also remembering all the fun we had with Fuzz. We would say "Remember the time she was up on the roof, meowing down at us?" "Remember how she used to get really mad at us after we came back from our trips?" This morning, even as I was deeply sad about Fuzz's loss, I had a warm feeling in my heart about all the wonderful time we had together.

As I type this, I am between streams of tears. I find it impossible not to cry on a day like this. However, I do not think today was a bad day, or a good day. It was just another day. To Fuzz, it was just another day. It was the day she went to her Home, that she was set free, in a paradoxical way. All of today, I did not want to forget about Fuzz, even though it was painful to think about her. As I said, I did not want to forget her, to lose her memory, I want to honor and cherish that sliver of time we were given together. I find it painful to cry, but I know crying is necessary here.

So what course will this grief take for me? I don't know. Maybe I'll be sad, feel a little angry, a little guilty for not having taken better care of Fuzz's health, maybe I'll just feel like this grief is a huge, dark force that is inundating me, that I have no power to stop. I might have to face all of this. I guess I'll just have to let the grief run its course. Not that it will evaporate entirely, I would not even want that. As my Dad said, the worst part to him is that after someone dies, their life gets farther in the past, and is less prominent. I will always remember the value Fuzz had in this household.

In our family, Fuzz became a popular fixture. Despite her crazy, sometimes frustrating, antics, we kept caring for her. I considered today that we might have given her a real, caring home where before, she had none. I grieve, but at the same time, I feel a warmth from the memories, and the spirit, of Fuzz. I have felt waves today of both deep, deep sadness, and warm joy for her life.

My real hope is that even though Fuzz is physically gone, and her identity subsumed to the Great Unknown in the Universe, that the spirit, the soul, the driving forces of Fuzz remain always alive and well. This includes living without regret, without prejudice, without resentment or hatred. Living in this way is part of the Fuzz Memorial Project, of which this blog will become an integral part, effective immediately. Even though Fuzz's lifespan on Earth may have ended, we can choose to honor the spirit that she embodied. You can do that by loving, caring and living with no regret. I will have more news on the Fuzz Memorial Project to come.

See ya, and Keep Wondering, Folks!

Impressions and Storytelling

Hi there,

Well, today, we're going to branch out in "the arts." Because this blog is not just about my visual art, although that is a huge staple of it. This blog is about visual art, performance, discussions of process, meaning, and even music, on occasion. My brother is the musical one of the family, so I mostly borrow his music, but I will borrow, and look at, these, on occasion.

My subject today is doing impressions of people. This is part of my exploration of performance and character at large. The embedded video above comes from an Inside the Actors' Studio interview with Kevin Spacey. One of my favorite movies when I was in my teen years were LA Confidential and Glengarry Glenross. So I grew up following a lot of Spacey's work, and I was amazed when I fould this video.

For some reason, I really admire people who are able to do these impressions really well. My older brother is one such influence. For a long time, I have done impersonations with him, often in a casual or joking way, paying attention to the surface-level details. It is only recently that I have begun to understand this impression style as a legitimate craft on its own. So let me share with you some of what I have learned about doing impressions.

First, you can do impressions, vocally, physically, or both, of all sorts of people. The most-sought-after candidates for this are actors, celebrity figures, media spokes people, and political figures. Christopher Walken is usually first among choices for impersonation. Some of my personal favorites are Jack Nicholson, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bill Clinton. People with heavy accents or very distinct vocal characteristics are easier to imitate. If a subject has a more neutral voice, it is much trickier, but if you know what to look for, it is possible.

I used to think that I didn't have an accent. I thought that people from Southern California didn't have any accent. I knew we tend to talk vaguely like Midwesterners, since that is where many early Californians came from. However, even if you do not have an accent that jumps out at people, you still have a distinct way of speaking and using language. I learned in a voice class I just took that it has to do with the way you pronounce verb and consonant sounds. If you are impersonating someone with a distinct accent, pronouncing these sounds without exagerration can really change your body chemistry, putting you in the frame of mind for the "character."

Anyway, the person you choose to imitate don't have to be well-known. You can do one of someone you know well, like a family member, close friend, or someone else. When you do, however, you might take a different tone with them, since you have to talk to them again. Here, it helps to joke affectionately about them, as I do. One of the people I enjoy riffing on is my uncle from back east, for example.

Voice acting professional Jim Ward shows some tricks of his trade.

Another level to this is the physicality of the subject person. Besides getting their voice down, what are their ticks? First off, what sorts of phrases or verbal habits do they have? This is what the above voice actor, Jim Ward, a well-known impressionist, picks up on above. He takes a subtle, defining characteristic of each of his subjects' delivery, such as Al Gore's sighs, or Woody Allen's nasal, twitchy tone, or Jack Nicholson's intense forehead involvement (I've learned that it's harder to incorporate this for us younger imitators), or Bill Clinton's using the "curled index finger" pointing to drive a message home. Then he puts the emphasis on that point, exaggerating it, and building from that mannerism. Now, sometimes, said mannerism could be a physical tick, or some word or phrase the person habitually says.

For instance, the uncle that I just mentioned, at every time where our family sits down to dinner with him, has us do this thing where he asks us all "What's the most embarassing thing you've ever done without telling anyone, starting with you?" He's got this low, grumbly voice, and invariably, whenever he does this at the dinner table, it is to someone across the table, so he will not have to participate.

There are also little phrases people fall back on. On this blog, I always open with "Hi there," and sign off with "keep wondering, folks." For instance, the current president, Barack Obama, at the beginning of nearly every thought, will say "look," or "let me be clear." These are good things to start off with. Then, if they have a tone that they usually take, such as hurried, or agitated, or that of the know-it-all, using that would give some weight to it.

This goes back to something the late, great George Carlin said in his autobiography, "The important thing in [doing an impression] is not just their voice, how they say things, but what the person would say." This is a staple of playing character types. Representing what your subject would say, or how they would say it, would be an interesting character study. I am fascinated by looking at people as characters. To show them openly and honestly, even if making fun of them, is the best way to do it. This does a service for your truth, and theirs.

This element of the truth is what separates just a casual, exaggerated impersonation from something that really looks and sounds like the person you're imitating. I like to talk like the person, but consider what they would say. This is where the storytelling comes in. You are telling a micro-story of what this person acts like, sounds like, and is like.

This is the same purpose behind acting. What are actors but storytellers. Their job is to tell the story of the person they play. They must tell the truth of the person's actions, speech and life. Being an actor, I have discovered, is a great job for people who love people-watching. I like people-watching, even though I have times when I get tired, mentally, and emotionally, from it. You can even get tired doing something you love.

Well, this is the first post of mine in the field of performing, formally or informally, a story. I have stories, large and small, that I like to tell when I draw, and when I do these impressions. My hope is that even though these stories are sometimes ficticious, they are not, in any way, false. I hope, when I tell a story, that it will be true, sometimes to fact, but always to life.

Anyway, what do you think? Do you have a story, book, film, play, or routine, that you really believed in? Did anything make you go, "Hey, that is really true?" Let me know, in the comment box below. See ya, and keep wondering, folks!

Warming the Climate, Heating up Tempers

This map I did to show potential hotspots around the world.

Hi there! Well, the good thing about doing this blog is that the potential for fresh material keeps cropping up. My reservoir is always being replenished. The problem with my last blog was that I always felt like it took a lot of energy to look at the issue of each post, then put an essay out there on it. With this, I always seem to have enough energy to do this. Lots of times, I only have ideas for a few posts in the future, but ideas suddenly crop up, and the material has its way of falling into place.

Anyway, this might cause controversy, but here goes. Last night, at dinner, a discussion at the table turned heated. My grandfather, who is visiting from back east (Barre, Mass.) brought up an email he had sent to us all early yesterday morning. He is a chemist, who specializes in the study of applying biomass for uses in fuel and other utilities. He takes a very contrarian opinion on the issue of Climate Change/Global Warming. Quoting the email, he said: "I came to the conclusion in my note below that we should put more CO2in the atmosphere ASAP to prevent the next ice age, which is overdue."

He floated this at the dinner table, and my Mom was not going to have any of it. He pointed to this story on how airliners should be spouting more fuel into the atmosphere. He has floated this hypothesis that the Earth revolves around cycles of Ice Ages, and that our climate is currently overdue for such an Ice Age. He said in the email that it is "irresponsible" to only look at part of the climate data.

On the contrary, I believe, with all due respect, that it is irresponsible to use these findings to extrapolate that we should have even less regard for what our actions do to the Earth's cycles. It seems to be a way of justifying our poor environmental habits, rather than looking at the effect our processes have on the Earth's atmospheric, tidal, and climate cycles. As such, this is not solely a scientific argument, but also about our society, and our outlook.

This was what got under my skin about his train of thought. However, you have to understand that he was part of the World War II generation. To him, technological might has always been a good thing. The idea that our collective actions could harm the earth itself would severely undercut that narrative. This is why it struck me as a smug rationalizing away information that would help our worldview, literally our view of the world, evolve, mature.

His assertion was that most climate scientists only look at a limited portion of the past climate data. This is not entirely true, by the way. My brother looked up a graph, found on wikipedia that shows CO2 levels vs. atmosphere warmth for the last 800,000 years. It is very similar to this one that I found, that shows the same data taken over the last 400,000 years.

This graph is taken from data from Epica and Vostok measurements, which look at ice findings in the Poles.

Anyway, I think my brother made exactly the right move here. Not only did it shift the focus back to a discussion of science, rather than a statement made blithely, regardless of the views of others, and the explosion of resentments pent up, but it showed, in verifiable and nonconfrontational terms, that people have been researching this and pondering the data. I think this was the perfect way to defuse this situation.

Anyway, as I said, the way he presented this view just annoyed me with its blithe mockery of ocncern for our physical Earth, the climate scientists who have found this warming to be happening, and efforts to reevaluate our communities, our use of, just, anything, because it all comes from somewhere. His argument about an ice age being overdue may be the case, but it does not necessarily mean that this much CO2 is good for the climate, still less that we should continue, at more rapid rates, to put out CO2 in the ways we are now.

Furthermore, this totally ignores the undue harm that a warming climate does to the ecosystems of the world. To say nothing of the absolute havoc, chaos, and possibly violence it will elicit in societies around the world. As I mentioned, water and food will be more difficult to produce for people, and starvation can occur, and violence can follow.

Even more startling, Harry Shearer did a piece on his Sunday radio show called "News of the Warm," last November 6. He quoted a recent study from Science Daily that outlined how climate change is shifting the landscape of the Pacific Northwest and Western Canada, much more drastically, and with the potential to introduce unwelcome new species into this area.

One line in this study said "Conditions have become more favorable to outbreaks of diseases and insects." The one thing that got me was the point that large parts of Northern California, Oregon, Washington state, Idaho and British Columbia may shift from pine forests to grasslands or sagebrush desert. Imagining Oregon and Washington state covered in the kind of desert we have down here in Southern California. Just that image in my mind was startling.

The video below is presented to show the energy industry's influence on some scientists critical of the climate data. It also highlights some of the ways that "Global Warming" does not mean that it will be hotter all the time.

In all fairness to the skeptics, I do not believe that all people who don't believe in climate change are puppets of the oil industries. I am also including a story about a physicist who was skeptical, of his own volition and will, of the Climate data, and decided to double check it himself. Here's what his findings were:

My point here is not that CO2 is bad, or to just be a "doomsayer" as my Grandfather sometimes says. In fact, just this past Friday, we all went to a screening of a film called Carbon Nation, which focuses more on energy production without spewing unnecessary CO2 into the atmosphere. It has stories of self-interested business people, newly-converted environmental caretakers, people working on this issue, and, in the case of Van Jones, a heartwarming story of community growth and rejuvenation. From the tough ghetto of Richmond, California to the struggling to of Roscoe, Texas, it provides inspirational stories. These stories make you think "Gee, I didn't think that was possible." Far from being an indictment of humanity, it was full of the rich experience of people changing their lives, with the call to responsibility for our "footprint" being the rallying cry around which their lives could grow and do what human lives can do again.

think this pencil drawing above, done back in late 2007, is a good representation of my view now. It is trying to capture the quality of this landscape, up in the Central Valley, near the town of Lost Hills, and the starkness of the rusty oil derricks and pipes running over the brittle desert floor. Here, the bleak, ugly oil machinery is juxtaposed against the mellow, picturesque Central California semi-coastal sky. Even though people try to manipulate this land, and morph it into a technological landscape, they ultimately exist and live within it, and according to its laws. This leads nicely into my view, as it eveloves, on the environment itself.

My view is that we, as humans, need to be both indicted and cared for. We should both respect the dignity of the people in the business of raw material extraction, but we also must realize that these activities are often harmful to the physical world, to the animals, and to us, as well. We must respect our technological prowess, but know enough to realize that technology can harm both its creators, us, and, again, the Earth. The Earth itself operates much like a macro-organism. Indeed, no technological development or breakthrough can occur without our physical world and the materials it provides.

Anyway, the reason I sat down to write this is to talk about the family conflict. My Mom was really getting flustered. I could see her face turning red. There seems to be more drama happening between my family members now. Or maybe it just seems that way, because I am older, and I can pick up on familial conflicts now.

I had a few reactions to this. On the one hand, as I have explained, I objected to the argument, and thought I needed to say so, and why. On the other, I didn't want to get involved in all the ruckus of my four other family members talking heatedly at each other. At many points, I just stepped out, in between saying things I wanted to say, making sure that I didn't make anyone even more agitated. I don't like the confrontation. I have come to believe that people should listen in these arguments. Anyway I don't like to write others off, and tune them out, even if I am very pissed off at them, and want to get them back. Fault me for it, but that's what I have developed.

So, I didn't want to yell back at anybody. I also do not think it is right to just go along and indulge people. To agree when you do not really agree just makes you resent them even more. They will even begin to suspect, sooner or later, that you do not really mean it when you say "Yes. Okay. Nothing is wrong. I agree." Your body language and tone of voice will give you away. I didn't want to just tune out and be apathetic, either. I think it is better to talk about and mention things, rather than ignore them or wish them away. So I couldn't yell, I couldn't play along with his point, and I didn't want to just tune him out. What could I do?

I think that it is much better to say what you mean, listen earnestly, and respond in kind. Sometimes this is dangerous, but not having any other appealing options, I usually choose either tuning out, or in my better moments, saying honestly what I believe in. I have, as often as I could, given the other person or people, room to express themselves. I believe the best way to honor someone is to listen to them. After that, you do what you have to.

So my question for you, the reeder, is this. How do you deal with uncomfortable family conflicts? Do you withdraw, or fight back, or acquiesce? Is there anything you have done that you wish you hadn't? Tell me what you think you need to express here. See you soon!

See ya, and Keep wondering, folks!